It is a science fiction role playing game developed and published by Squaresoft (Now Square-Enix) for the Playstation 1. It was released on February 11, 1998 in Japan and on October 20, 1998 in North America. The game was never released in PAL territories. The game recently saw a PSN release on February 22, 2011 in North America. The game can be played on the PS3 and PSP.

Where can I get it?

You can either try and pick up an expensive PS1 disc copy of the game or buy it off the Playstation Network Store for $9.99.

Is it any good?

Yes, you should play it now.

Why is it called Xenogears?

Xeno means Strange. There are mecha in the game called Gears that characters pilot. Combining the words together you get “Strange Gears”. Xeno can also mean Foreign/Outsider/Alien.
Late Story Spoilers:There is also a Gear in the game called Xenogears

Story:

Xenogears centers on the protagonist Fei Fong Wong. Fei was brought to a village named Lahan mysteriously three years ago by a masked man. He arrived with substantial injuries and amnesia. Fei was adopted by the Lahan’s Village Chief. He made a peaceful living there making many close friends. One day two opposing military groups descend on the village, fighting in gigantic mecha suits named “Gears”. The fight between the two military groups causes death and destruction to descend onto the village. To protect the village Fei decides to enter one of the “Gears” that recently had its pilot killed. While attempting to protect the village from the invaders, Fei witnesses his friends being brutally murdered. This traumatic event causes Fei to blackout, a gigantic explosion destroys the village. Fei later awakens and finds out that he has destroyed the whole village with no recollection of what happened and is told that he lost consciousness and that the gear then went berserk. As a result, Fei and Citan, the village's doctor, decide to leave with the abandoned gear to get it away from the surviving villagers. This is where the game starts.

The principles and philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan influence the plot, character design, and world of Xenogears. Additionally, the symbols, theological concepts, and devotional practices of several world religions are represented in fictionalized forms in the game. The game has a large amount of Gnostic and Judeo-Christian Symbolism.

Characters:

Fei Fong Wong

Fei has lived in the village of Lahan for three years and has no memory of events prior to his arrival. After stepping into the cockpit of a Gear with the intent of protecting his town from destruction, he ironically becomes responsible for laying it to waste. After being responsible for the destruction of Lahan, Fei is forced to leave the village. Fei is a great martial artist with a certain unnatural knack at piloting a Gear. Fei will soon find out that the fate of the planet may rest on his and his companion’s shoulders.

Elhaym “Elly” Van Houten

Elly is a young skilled officer of Gebler who meets Fei in the forest near Lahan Village. Elly was leading an operation to steal a top-secret experiment gear from Kislev, but was forced to crash-land in Lahan, and was partially responsible for the destruction of the village. She uses rods in combat.

Citan Uzuki

Citan is a medical doctor who lives up the mountain path from Lahan village with his wife, Yui, and his daughter, Midori. He is a very smart individual who has expert knowledge on Gears. After Fei is blamed for the destruction of Lahan village, Citan agrees to assist Fei after his banishment from the village. He uses his fists in combat.

Bartholemew “Bart” Fatima

Bart is the leader of a group of sand pirates who befriends Fei and Citan after shooting down a prison ship that they were on. Bart uses a whip in combat.

Ricardo “Rico” Banderas

Rico is a massive demi-human and champion Gear fighter in Nortune, the imperial capital of Kislev. He has a sturdy reputation, and his size can be frightening. Despite being a prisoner, his lifestyle is superior to that of many nobles and he appears to have a connection with the Kislev ruler. Rico is one of the game's strongest physical characters, but also the slowest and with lowest accuracy.

Billy Lee Black

Billy is introduced as a young, pacifistic priest of the Ethos religion, and later is revealed as a member of the Etone branch, which job is to "clean" and "purge" the world of a monster group The Reapers. He has a problematic relationship with his father Jessiah (Jessie), who abandoned his family. Having been mentored by the Ethos leader Bishop Stone, Billy dedicated his life to religion and cares for many children including his younger sister Primera at an Ethos orphanage. Billy's sports a trio of guns in battle and also wields a number of useful support "Ether" spells.

Maria Balthasar

Maria is a young girl who pilots Seibzehn, a special Gear her father, Nikolai created, to protect her home. Although her gear is powerful, Maria's physical attacks are weak. However, she can use ether attacks to call Seibzehn to attack enemies, even in enclosed areas.

Chu-Chu

It’s Chu-Chu

(Crucified Chu-Chu brought to you by flyover)

Emeralda Kasim

Emeralda is a nanomachine colony built to aid the human race. Emeralda's nanomachine-created body makes her a powerful ally in battle, and she possesses powerful ether spells as well. She does not use any weapons, but rather, she morphs her limbs (and hair) into various melee weapons while attacking.

Grahf

Grahf is a cloaked individual wearing a mask that Fei initially encounters in the desert of Aveh. He claims responsibility for the destruction of Lahan in order to bring out Fei's powers and initially only says that he seeks to destroy God. Frequently appearing with a gear similar in style to Fei's Weltall, Grahf seeks to use Fei for his own purposes

Questions & Answers:

What was that movie at the beginning?

You will find out what happened later in the game. You can ignore it for now, just keep it in the back of your head.

What is the combat like?

There are two different combat systems. The first is when your characters are not piloting their gears. You press the corresponding buttons: Triangle, Square, and X to use moves that you can combine together to perform special moves. You also have the ability to use spells called “Ether”. If you save up Ability Points used to perform moves, you can use a Combo by combining all of the points together to perform several special moves. When in the Gears the characters will perform moves that use fuel. Combing moves together that have been saved up will allow the Gear to use a special move. Ether can also be used while in the Gears.

Someone mentioned that the text speed is abnormally long?

They might remember it differently. The text speed is pretty normal.

How is the music?

It is some of the best music recorded in a videogame (This gaffer's opinion). An Orchestral CD of the games music was just released in Japan called Myth. A topic for it already exists on Neogaf. The composer of the music is named Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Secret of Mana)

I heard there was a controversy when this was released in North America?

Yes there was a slight controversy. There is a heavy amount of Gnostic and Judeo-Christian Themes. The main source of the controversy is because the main character Fei is told by another character that he will “Kill God”.

Do you kill God?

I’m not going to tell you. You will have to figure that out for yourself.

I heard something about the second disc of this game not being very good, is this true?

Yes and no. The narration style changes during the start of the second disc. A lot of information including key events are thrown at the character in past tense. Also a lot of villages are no longer available to explore for plot purposes. The reason this may have happened is because the game world was so ambitious, that by the time they got to making the second part of the game they ran out of enough resources and time to finish the vision of the game that they came up with. The second part of the game is still good during the second part, just not as good as the first disc.

Are Xenogears and Xenosaga related?

Slightly. After Xenogears was finished, The creator of both Xenogears and Xenosaga , Tetsuya Takahashi, left Squaresoft in 1998 along with Hirohide Sugiura. Using funds from Namco, they started Monolith Soft and made Xenosaga. Xenosaga is supposed to be a reimaging of the first episode of the Xenogears story as well as a spiritual sequel/prequel. Takahashi has stated in an interview ”It's probably more suitable to say that it follows the direction and style of Xenogears. Now that we are under a different company, we figured we should start everything from scratch all over again. Though there are familiar faces that serve as important characters in Xenosaga, others are more like self-parodies, so we don't really want Xenogears fans to overreact. Like movies, sometimes you have the director of the movie or friend of the leading actor appearing as cameos, so it's similar to that.”

First Episode?

Yes. Xenogears the game is actually the Fifth episode of the Xenogears universe. A book called Perfect Works, published only in Japan, gives a complete overview of the plot of all six episodes of the Xenogears universe. The Perfect Works book also contains a complete analysis of the plot, characters, and Gears in the game. In some parts it is necessary to understand the full scope of the game. It was never released in English, but several fans have translated the book. For any Xenogears fan wanting to know more about the plot, it is a great read.

Is it true that Cloud mentions Xenogears in FF7 while he is in a coma?

Cloud is speaking gibberish and says the words Zenogias at one point. This is close to the pronunciation of Xenogears in Japanese.

Edit:

Originally Posted by BocoDragon

By the way, the OP section about Cloud/FF7 should be edited. It's certainly a Xenogears reference. It was translated by Sony's team of idiot monkeys who didn't know what they were doing, but in Japanese syllables, there would have been no difference between Xenogears/Zenogias.

Is Kos-Mos in this?

No, that’s Xenosaga

Many people may be returning to play this classic again, but there may be a large amount of people that are playing it for their first time. Please always remember to mark your spoilers properly!

I would definitely be in for a replay, but at the moment with so many new games on the table I simply need to prioritize and finish. But for new people, prepare what awesomeness you shall experience soon, maybe in a month or two I will join in.

Awww, Xenogears. I promised myself a long time ago that I would never replay this game because it was so long also the Tower of Babel dungeon had that bullshit leap of faith that almost made me break the disc in two, but I decided that I should give it another go through.

Great OP but there were a few mistakes. I am pretty sure Mitsuda didn't do the Secret of Mana OST(maybe he had a few tracks? I am not sure). Also the text isn't so much slow, but it becomes a damn crawl if you die at a battle and have to go through all the text again. The fact that you couldn't skip text made some of the cutscenes unbearable if you had to go through them again. Also, isn't the Elly thing a bit of a spoiler?

Probably the only RPG where I would grind based solely on the battle system, and not necessarily for leveling.

I bought Xenogears and Lunar: SSSC on the same day years ago, and damn how they couldn't be more different. Xenogears blew my mind, due to the aforementioned battle system, amazing soundtrack, and (convoluted) plot. The story is fairly pretentious these days, but this was back when Square gave a damn about trying to push for something different, and I have to give them credit for risking a North American localization.

I won't be in for a replay, but I will leave this here as an example of why the soundtrack is one of the best:

Awww, Xenogears. I promised myself a long time ago that I would never replay this game because it was so long also the Tower of Babel dungeon had that bullshit leap of faith that almost made me break the disc in two, but I decided that I should give it another go through.

Great OP but there were a few mistakes. I am pretty sure Mitsuda didn't do the Secret of Mana OST(maybe he had a few tracks? I am not sure). Also the text isn't so much slow, but it becomes a damn crawl if you die at a battle and have to go through all the text again. The fact that you couldn't skip text made some of the cutscenes unbearable if you had to go through them again. Also, isn't the Elly thing a bit of a spoiler?

I beat this game back in the day and just started playing again last night. Luckily I have a terrible memory and forgot most of what happens in the game. So it's almost like I'm playing it for the first time again.

I also just bought the Xenogears orchestral soundtrack on iTunes today; listening right now.

Still probably my favorite storyline in a j-rpg. A bit of a mess at times, and has a rather poor translation, but i absolutely love the characters and the ambitious scope of the storyline. Plus the music is <3

Gameplay was hit and miss for me, they are times where i really got into it and couldn't stop playing, but there was eventually a point where i got frustrated and put the game on hold for a week or so. (the babel tower arghh).

a) nothing too bad if i remember correctly
b) battles are actually pretty fast.
c) somewhat high, not unbearable unless you are lost in a big dungeon. Happened twice in the game for me, and it was getting annoying. You could use a walkthrough for help
d) afair, that was never an issue whatsoever.

I really want to experience this game again, but parts of it were so long and soul-crushing. I don't think I could stomach it. Glad to say I finished it once, but the fuck if I remember 80% of the plot.

As much of a mess as a number of other Square gems; CC, KH1 and KH2, but in vastly different ways. At least all four have tremendous, fantastic soundtracks.

Things that will probably be annoying and dated about the game would be

- Slow text speed. (it can make the cutscenes longer to sit through then they should be)
- A number of tedious parts / dungeons throughout the game.
- The graphics. (obviously)
- Disk 2 (you either love it or hate it).

I think this will be a fun experience. The first disc will be massive nostalgia for me (with a much better understanding considering I was what, 10 when this came out?) and the second disc will be all new because I never got that far and then my disc stopped working.

I remember playing this years ago, and never beating it. I was like 30 hours in, at some prison with that big mother fucker, and then I just stopped. I got really frustrated that the story hadn't gone any where.

I think I actually started to really see jRPGs pacing as a huge problem.

Anyway, I still have the physical discs, and I bought this anyway. I still have my old save. A friend of mine said to just play off my old save. I remember the battle system quite vividly, but hardly any of the events. A couple people said to forget them and continue with my save since the majority of the story hasn't even happened yet. One person said to start over.

You can either try and pick up an expensive PS1 disc copy of the game or buy it off the Playstation Network Store for $9.99.

Wait a sec, the disk version is expensive? When did that happen. I was going to sell mine on ebay awhile back but basically saw that it didn't sell for a good price so I've kept it. (Come to think of it I was going to sell my first run FFT as well but the price on that wasn't any good either.)

Is it true that Cloud mentions Xenogears in FF7 while he is in a coma?[INDENT]That depends on your interpretation, but most likely not. Cloud is speaking gibberish and says the words Zenogias at one point.

Don't forget there is a cameo by Chrono Trigger's Lucca in the first village, and a picture of FF7's Tifa shows up on a wall at one point.